How To Instantly Eliminate Waste In Your PPC Account

Identifying ways to cut waste in your AdWords spend can be very
simple, if you know where to look. The information is easy to find and
by the end of this article you’re going to be able to start formulating a
strategy to trim the fat.

We are going to focus on the Search
Terms Report. When you properly work this section of Google AdWords,
you’re going to start to see a shift in not only your overall cost per
lead, but you’ll start to see a drastic improvement in your overall lead
quality. So if your lead costs are rising and your results are flat or
diminishing – there’s a good chance this section of your PPC strategy is
not being worked correctly.

Here’s how to properly manage your Google AdWords Search Terms:

When
you log into Google AdWords, you want to click on your keywords tab and
from here you’ll notice search terms. All of my clients have full
transparency and access to this screen so they can verify our progress.
If you can’t get in you may want to consider reworking your agreement
with your provider. It’s easy to give a client read-only access. This is
a Google permission that serves the best interest of both parties and
it is a win-win for everybody involved. If you can’t get access there’s
one of two things happening here.

You are not in a direct bill
relationship with Google and you’re paying a 3rd party for advertising,
which is the worst possible relationship to be in because you can’t see
anything and you don’t know for sure the numbers that are being reported
to you are factual. It’s very easy in this industry to hide and markup
numbers.

Or Second, you’re in a relationship with a provider who
doesn’t want to be exposed. They hide behind “proprietary” setups. In
reality – they just don’t want to be held accountable, because once you
get your hands on the information you might actually discover there’s no
one really steering the ship and your account is on cruise control.

Now,
when you get to the search terms report, you’re going to be able to see
all of the keywords and phrases that resulted in a person clicking on
your ads. Here, you’re going to be able to determine if the actual term
that triggered your ad makes sense to the type of lead you actually want
to generate.

You are going to uncover a lot of waste when you get
here, or you may realize that you are missing opportunities and your
keyword strategy does not contain the right set of keywords that impact
revenue.

You are not only going to see all of the keywords that
you paid for, but you’ll also be able to see the keywords that triggered
an ad and did not result in a click.

When I go to this screen,
the first thing I want to look out for, is if the account is being
properly maintained. As a Google AdWords pay-per-click manager, this
screen is the first place I go to assess the keyword performance of all
my client’s account. There is a very specific process that goes into
this part of your Google AdWords performance.

When I was a
teenager I worked for a lumber yard in the summer. When I clocked in
every morning the first thing I did was cull the lumber. I would go to
the 2 x 4 cradles and reorganize them, lay them flat and make them
presentable for the customers that day. Part of the job was to pick
orders and stage them for builders and remodelers and the other part of
the job, the most fun part, I got to drive a forklift. I’d pull up the
forklift and take all of the warped lumber and put them on the forks.
This lumber would go into a second pile to be sold at a discount.

Now,
instead of breaking my back lifting 2×4’s, my team and I work this
screen for our clients on a daily basis. This is the first thing my team
does in the morning – we go into each of our clients and assess the
activity that happened the prior day. We stay on top of it, because if
you let it go – you’re wasting budget. It’s like driving a car 100,000
miles without an oil change, if you are not staying on top of this
screen.

Depending on how much the client spends, this can be a
10-minute process or an hour long process – it just really depends on
the volume that transpired the day before.

And we are following
the very same process as I did in the lumber yard. We are isolating the
keywords that performed really well and delivered a lead and put them
into their very own Top Performing Keywords Pile. The keywords that
don’t make sense are isolated and they are placed into a Negative
Keyword List – and this is a very basic function of management. And here
at Ad Machines, it’s part of our daily management program to attack
this list every single day. Over time, we’re able to focus in on the top
performing keywords and allocate more budget. And the negatives are
shut off from the flow of traffic, so we are constantly refining lead
quality.

Now, if this is your first time going to this screen – go
ahead and open up your date range to ALL TIME. Here you’re going to get
an entire history of your account. This is the most valuable piece of
data you have as it relates to your Google AdWords account. You’ll be
able to download and extract all of this history into an excel
spreadsheet.

When you do this you can drill into the spreadsheet
and determine where all of the waste is. You’ll discover keywords that
don’t make sense to you, you’ll be able to identify keywords that do
actually make sense and are not performing – either they are not
receiving any clicks, or the click costs are so high that they are not
yielding a tangible return on your advertising investment. You’ll also
discover competitive terms and names of your competitors and technical
terms where someone in your industry may have Googled a procedure or
part, and ended up clicking on your ad, you’ll discover really long
phrases where people searched by talking to their phones, you’ll see
misspellings and you’ll also see the good keywords that are delivering a
good result.

Now, think of this screen as a treasure map. Google
is going to show you the keyword that triggered the ad. Here is the
match type – this is rule that was setup for the keyword. Exact is the
tightest you can run a keyword and broad is the loosest you can run a
keyword. Match types is a great topic for another 10-minute
pay-per-click. I can dedicate an entire episode to this. Google is going
to tell you where to find this keyword – by campaign and in which ad
group. And here you’ll be able to see the individual keyword
performance.

Here is a quick rundown of what each metric you will see in the Search Term Report and what each measures:

Number of Clicks: This is what you were charged for.

Number
of impressions: How many times your ad was triggered for this search
term. Impressions is a sign of market demand and overall search volume.

CTR:
this is a percentage that tells you how many clicks you got based on
the number of search impressions. Now you can learn a lot from this one
performance metric. If you have a low click thru rate than you may have
an ad that is not performing or your keyword match type is too loose and
you need to rework your keyword strategy.

CPC: this is how much
it costs to have fun. This is what you are paying for someone to click
on your ad. Every single keyword has its own unique rate and it changes
all of the time.

Total Cost will tell you how much you have invested based on the data range you select.

Average
Position: This metric will give you a sense of what position you were
in at the time of the click activity. It’s always a healthy strategy to
test different bid rates and test your performance at different average
positions in an effort to optimize your spend.

Conversions close
the loop; it tells you how effective this keyword is. A keyword is a top
performer when it gets a conversion. A conversion is a lead – somebody
either called you or submitted a form. It is an advanced feature we do
setup for our clients – it requires integrations with your call tracking
system, your reporting system and with Google Analytics. But when you
do set this tool up and use it – it is a huge game changer in your
strategy. It’s the difference between a $125 cost per call and a $50
cost per call. When you can identify keywords that work, you can spend
more on them. And when you identify keywords that don’t work you can
eliminate them because they don’t make sense to your strategy or you can
develop a plan to retool your individual keyword strategy to elevate
their performance and work to achieve a higher result.

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